He would never see his farm again.
He had not expected to. But then, he had not expected to live this long, either. Quintus glanced out beyond the flicker of tiny fires, the kneeling bulks of camels, into the desert. The night wind, cooling now, sent swirls of sand dancing up the dunes. In the firelight, the sand looked saffron, the color of a veil that a lady—or a spirit—might wear.
Far overhead, a star shot down through the heavens toward the eastern horizon. Quintus might have been a boy again, walking in the hills with his father or grandfather. Involuntarily, he smiled. His jaws ached, unfamiliar as the exercise was to them. It had fallen to the right: a favorable omen, thank all the gods.
He stared across the fire at the men who had kept by his side the most closely: Rufus, Arsaces, even Lucilius, and beyond them, other survivors of his Legion. Already, many had wrapped their heads in cloth, a trick borrowed from the caravan routes. Their eyes and teeth—almost all he could see for the swathings of coarse cloth—gleamed red in the firelight as they watched. He could see it now: If they wished to live, they would take on the ways of the desert until they ceased to look like Romans. Gradually, they would cease to be Romans, too. And then what would they be?
Subject people? People without a City or a name? You could not un-name Romans; you could only kill them. His father had died for that truth.
Best not think of it. He was alive. These were his men. They needed each other.
The wind danced down from the dunes he had mistaken for hills. So, he would never see his farm again, never buy it back and purify its altars. But what would he see? A new excitement flashed across his consciousness like the shooting star of a few instants back. It had looked like an eagle, returning in victory to its lofty nest.
Only imagine. He would see Marakanda, he thought. Who would have dreamed his path would cross Alexander's? For a moment, joy blazed up in him. He suppressed it. It was unworthy, he told himself, to feel anticipation in the face of disgrace and defeat.
"Make no doubt about it," Lucilius said. "We're slaves too. Not fancy ones, the sort you show off at banquets. Gladiators, maybe." He spoke as though he hated Quintus for smiling even briefly and all of them for continuing to exist.
He got up and wandered from the small fire.
Gladiators. Crassus, who had wreaked such vengeance when the gladiators revolted, had failed miserably against barbarians; Lucilius was never going to forget it. No wonder he didn't seem as burdened by the loss of weapons as the rest of the veterans.
"Who needs a gladius when he's got a tongue like that?" Rufus asked. His mouth worked as if he wanted to spit, but he forebore, as if oppressed by the dryness all around him.
In the darkness, a darker bulk rose. They could see a campfire shine as this new man moved away from it. The silhouette of helmet, padded armor, and spear was unfamiliar. By that, Quintus assumed the man must be a warrior of Ch'in, who had been watching his Roman captives. Lucilius pointed at the fire, then at a larger fire at the center of the camp. The man nodded. "No doubt he's already started bargaining with the Ch'in," Quintus murmured to the centurion. Rufus nodded, not bothering to look shocked as he might have done when they were all still an army and the distinction between patrician/officer and everyone else was still good for some power.
"At least he's won us the partial freedom of the camp, sir. The Ch'in figure, if they guard the water, the desert will guard us."
Quintus chuckled. "I won't give them a fight about that. They know this land."
"And I think they're curious about what we'll do. The tribune says they have all sorts of notions about us. The merchants?" he shrugged. "A couple of them have women along."
Quintus tensed.
"That Lucilius tried. Didn't get anywhere, but you had to expect him to try."
Their eyes met. Every Legion had one—at least. A man who was an accomplished scrounger. Or who could talk his way out of any punishment. Or help his friends get round the centurion or the tribunes. Perhaps that was one reason why Lucilius had approached the female merchants. Odd concept, that. Foolishness, perhaps, to think they might be softer-hearted.
Usually, the Legion scrounger was not a patrician. But then, he usually scrounged for wood or leather straps or food or wine. Not for political favor, like a client.
But all the Romans who survived here had been bred in a Rome shadowed by the terrors of Marius and Sulla. And Lucilius had sucked up politics with the mists of the Tiber. If Fortune favored them, he would protect their interests as well as his own. If not... Quintus shrugged. Long-disused muscles protested. If not, how much worse could things get?
An uproar brought their heads up. Bells clanged from harness as a small camel caravan approached the pass. Camels groaned, a rebellious clamor that sounded echoes as camels already unloaded for the night remembered their own grievances. Voices shouted in at least three languages.
"Others approach from Nisibis," Arsaces said. "It is best to travel with friends."
The auxiliary's head came up. "They drive their beasts hard," he commented. "Too hard. Unwise..."
"Friends?" Rufus half rounded on the Persian.
"Compared with the desert, all honest men," he paused, with conscious irony, on the word, "are friends. Of course, there are also the bandits. Thus, honest..." again that pause, "... caravans join together for the journey east."
Quintus could understand it. The Ch'in, with their well-armed troops, would stand a good chance of surviving anything but an attack by an army—and no huge army (such as the doomed Legions of which he had been such a guileless and reluctant part) could safely cross. Just the supplies of water and food for man and beast would require a caravan of their own. Thus, a small, well-equipped military party, their small entourage of captive Romans, and...
"Who comes?" Quintus asked.
"Some merchant or other," Rufus muttered. "Armed. I saw spears, guards."
"Nisibis is one of the staging points for the road east." Arsaces's voice took on a chanting overtone. "From Nisibis to Boukhara, Boukhara to Marakanda, to Ferghana of the blood-sweating steeds ... into the hills and down from the high pass to Kashgar, before we venture across the Anvil of Fire...."
"If this were a merchant caravan, we would wait... oh, a long, long time, excellent sirs, until all who wanted to cross had assembled. And then, we would depart. It can be a long time until the next caravan ... especially in the high summer."
A roar, of laughter and surprise mixed, came from the central fire. The shouts reminded Quintus of the fight in The Surena's camp. He grabbed again for the sword he no longer owned. No weapons at all, let alone the miracle weapons that Draupadi had promised could be—might be—found in the desert.
Damn! Had she been only a fever dream?
A crunch of the grit that passed for sand in this godforsaken wilderness brought him around, his head and heart pounding.
"Stop there ... hold it, it's the tribune!"
Lucilius broke back into the firelit circle. Even in the play of firelight and darkness, his face was red, and his breathing came too rapidly.
All around the fire, the surviving Romans leapt up. Arsaces glanced beyond, out at the beasts where they were staked out—and guarded—then set himself to listen.
"You saw that caravan come in," Lucilius said. "You saw how fast it was moving. Well, I found out why."
Long ago, Quintus had found out that when the patrician "found out" anything, he kept it to himself unless he could trade it for greater benefit.
What does he want this time?